Rule #1: Never Intimidate the Client

AMATEUR’S ANECDOTES

Rule #1: Never Intimidate the Client
Written by Philip M. Ware

vol. I, article 2 [originally written Fall 1998/Winter 1999]

There are times where being trendy and cool aren’t always the best recourse. This is especially true when your intended viewing audience is comprised mainly of retired Air Force officers and, basically, people over 60. Why? 1) No sense of humor when it comes to things that will cost them money. 2) If they hold the purse strings, it’s unwise to honk them off.

So why the etiquette lesson? Well, it’s not so much a lesson in manners as much as a page in my history book that I am perversely proud of, but would have benefited from just following the straight path.

There was a product. It was called something that for copyright issues (and the fact that I worked on the product, there’s some wacky legal binding on what I can discuss, also) I can’t tell you, but I can tell you that it was a large-scale application that was very ambitious. It was a monumental task, and as such, required a monumental-sized effort for the task I was given: an animation to impress the board of directors, who were going to be in town the next week. So, I was to impress the men with the power. “OK, no problem,” I thought.

I sat down with the LightWave modeler and, first, created the names of each of the components within the application to be shown off. The beveled text was adequate and titanic in size. The text was also given the material of a nice, shiny color, a differing shade for each component. I wanted the lights to be the color for these, at first, but then, the rich colors and flat texturing captured my interest. I pursued this and, following the success of my previous text animations for this company, proceeded in that direction. In the layout, I had them whirling in from points unknown, swiveling in from the side, all sorts of boring text animation things. Of the compiled video, the coolest part was when the previously displayed object shattered into about 1,400 polygons when the next text slammed into it. There was something about the whole animation that I didn’t like, though, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. I had, however, used close to 3 days on the modeling, layout, animation(which took the majority of time, even on the P6-200/128MB) and video editing. That, and we were worried that Yanni would come after us with a stick since I used one of his cooler intros as a click-track.

So, it was Thursday, and the brass were going to be in on Monday. Well…isn’t that interesting. I decided that I could still use the objects I had already created, but I went in and changed all of the materials to a fairly shine-free chrome. I also created an additional object that was the name of the application itself, and it was to be the final image these men saw. It would be titanic, colossal, immense! It would also have to happen quickly.

Now, I was monkeying with camera tracks and motion paths and such in the previous one, and after finally watching the tape of Millennium from the previous Friday, I had an idea. I started a new project in layout and the first thing I did was import all of the objects in there. So, with a polygon count reaching the number of lies told in congress in a year, I didn’t have much room for frills if I wanted this to render in under a decade. Soooo…if I wanted to give it some panache, I would have to do something with the environment – something I hadn’t messed with before. So the second thing I did was place a spotlight on every object. When they were all turned on, it was a real mess and extremely over-exposed. So, what is an animator to do? Dig into the manuals, that’s what!

I turned off all the lights in the scene and set the background to black. I then turned the colors on all the lights to either a pale yellow or a dark orange. Next, I set the visibility of all the objects to zero. That’s right, invisible. Now, the magic – envelopes. It’s a simple concept, and, really, it made the rest of the animation setup a snap. I just got the camera set on a path, ran the wireframe preview and wrote down times. From there, I went in and set the visibility envelopes for the different text object and the envelopes for the intensity of each of the lights. What this did was set up a sort of pulsating roller coaster ride through the text objects. Now, the camera path had to be adjusted so that it was coming at each of the text objects head on. Cool, huh? Well, yes, because as the camera would approach each object, the space in front of the camera would begin to fade into the object, but would then disappear after about 2 seconds as the camera got close enough for the object to overfill the screen.

Well, now you know the mood that this type of display can create, and that’s creepy. I hadn’t really thought about it that way, but it was very close to being something that you could imagine being shown by FOX around 9pm on a Friday. At any rate, I had compiled the whole animation(only 4 scenes) and crunched them down to – get this – 480MB. Now, I know this isn’t much by today’s standards, but what’s impractical about this size is that it had to be played off of a laptop machine with 32MB RAM. Yeah… Now, I didn’t realize how creepy it was until I was in the unlit conference room watching this puppy play on an 8′ screen. My first thought was, “Wow. This is…uh…dark.”

Now, remember rule #1? Well, when the 54-second animation finished and the lights were raised, I’m not sure I saw a face in the room that wasn’t a scowl. I got compliments on how well the animation was done, but I also got a stern talking to about the mood it presented. Apparently, the monolithic logo at the end didn’t make up for eerie lighting, disturbing camera angles or cello-heavy music. I don’t know if was as a direct result, but the project received very little backing and I was not asked to do a production animation for the board of directors again.

So, there you go. Thank you for reading, and check back later for new insights/stories/misguided prose.

Background in the Foreground

vol. I, article I  [originally written Fall 1998]

Yeah, so it’s sort of a vague title, and there’s no real topic that can be defined easily based on the vagueness of the title. That’s the point. This isn’t going to be a very specific article on a very specific topic relating to 3D rendering or animation or modeling. As the title of column suggests, this is an article written by an amateur, and it will mostly be stories about some experience I have had in the field, or relating to the field. That doesn’t mean that they won’t contain insight, or how-to information, but what it does mean is that I’m an amateur animator.

“OK, fine,” you say. “You’re an amateur. Who are you and why are you writing a column?” Good question, and fair enough. Well, as you could glean from the byline, my name’s Phil Ware and if you’ve never heard of me, that’s probably good, because if you had, I’d have to find out where and what back-royalties I was owed. Seriously, I’m an amateur animator that monkeys around on my PC at home, now, since I’m not at the job where I did most of my 3D work anymore. My experience there, however, was extensive for doing production stills and animations for a cost analysis house. I forged the path for multimedia, there, and since I have left, the path has grown over with weeds and brambles from disuse. That’s all good. While I was there, I used TrueSpace2.0, Lightwave5.0 and 3DStudioMax2.0. I also spent a lot of quality time in Premiere4.0 and PhotoShop3 and 4.0. Towards the end of my stint there, I also did a lot of production work in PageMaker, producing trifolds, brochures and programs for a local organization.

So what grand insights will I have for you? Probably nothing more than you would get out of a nice $60 book from Barnes and Noble, but they weigh 70 pounds and are usually a little more dry of a read. This being said, I will also give you some funny stories about mood and animation or a horror story of producing an animation for a client in under a day or something else that is amusing, painful for me but not for you, or just useful to think about if you’re in the business or even if you’re not.

I also want to say that I am nowhere near an expert in anything 3D related, but have had considerable experience and have toyed with many 3D products over the past 5 years.  With all this introductory stuff out of the way, why don’t we toss in a funny/serendipitous story before I go?

So, I’ve been working for weeks on this interactive brochure thing in Authorware, TrueSpace and Premiere. I was also using, at work, basically what I have at home, a Pentium 100MHz machine with 32MB RAM and a 2MB video card. In other words — things tended to crawl along when I was rendering the animations in TrueSpace or compiling the AVI files from Premiere. Authorware was a beast and GPF’d regularly because of memory issues. Now, we had been trying for a long while to get machine upgrades, but it just hadn’t happened and the CEO and VPs were coming down for a little pow-wow with our top folks. One of the things they wanted to see was a demo of this project they had been funding out of the overhead budget. No problem.

Well, my supervisor and I are sitting in my office with the VP sitting there watching my machine just crawl through my little demo of the creation process. We had already shown him the real product, but even it had been a little sluggish and there had been several cases where the computer just dropped frames to keep up with the 640×480x16MB anims compressed with your standard cinepak codecs for avi. About 2 minutes into one of the renderings, he looks over at me and says, “You need a faster computer. Put in a PO and I’ll sign off on it.” H’okay, this was novel. This from a company that wouldn’t get the applications developers(including me) faster machines for the development of things we actually had clients for… So, I put in for a Dell PentiumPro 200MHz monster with 64MB(at the time), an 8MB Number Nine #2e graphics card, 3GB of storage — the works for that time. It was around a $3,100 machine. The signed off on it. I put in the PO on the last day before the week off for the Christmas holidays and such, and when I got back on January 3rd, there was a LARGE box sitting on my floor. I couldn’t get into my office.

The following months saw several thousand dollars of application software arrive, and within several more months the project had been canned. I worked there another year and a half before deciding that greener pastures were anywhere but there.

That’s it for this installation of Amateur’s Anecdotes. Check back later to see if I have anything else to say. Thanks for reading!

Lack of Communication…

Several things have happened the last few months that have led to my nod doing ANYTHING with my blogs. 

First and foremost, we’ve moved.  Gone are the comfortable trappings of Dayton, Ohio replaced instead with the hustle, bustle and general business of Baltimore, Maryland.  It’s been quite an adjustment and I wouldn’t really say that anyone’s really adjusted, yet, though Lara’s been here since January, not in our new place.  So, that’s reason number one.

Number two, less significant in some regards, but not others, I’ve ditched the Windows platform in favor of linux.  The disruption, here, comes from the unfortunate dearth of blogging software like I was used to in the XP/Vista world.  The second part of this disruption stems from laziness.  I’ve not felt compelled to venture into the dashboards of each respective blogging account and hammer out a blog in one sitting — I just don’t do it that way, normally…

Another factor is having a general lack of time and motivation, meaning that when there’s time, there’s no motivation and when there’s motivation, generally speaking…there’s not time.  I’m hoping to move past this last road block and get back to routine posts.  I miss it.

Another thing I miss is being able to do things that I consider "blog-worthy."  I hope to start getting out and photographing, again, pretty soon.  So far, it’s just not happened, though.  We’ll see!  I’d say stay tuned, but I’d be just as happy with stopping by every so often to see if anything’s changed…

Where’s Phil

No, this isn’t some “Where’s Waldo” knock-off…this is my trying to explain where I’ve been rather than posting.  It’s not quite as simple as it sounds, unfortunately, but it’s not all that hard, either.

First, I’m in linux-land, having given Vista the final heave-ho after Vista’s inability to access anything on the hard drive in under 10 minutes.  This is only a slight exaggeration.   The net result of this, however, is that I no longer use LiveWriter, possibly the only useful application MS currently gives away.  It’s certainly more useful than those applications they offer for which you have to pay…  At any rate, that has slowed my ability to churn out bloggy stuff in a timely fashion mainly because I like to cross post between two blogs and maintain all three from one program.  I have yet to find a program for linux that will allow me to do this and, as yet, CrossOffice and Wine refuse to install LiveWriter…  Ugh.  So, I’m currently looking for a good alternative and contemplating whether I simply wish to install LiveWriter into the XP virtual machine I’m running via Sun’s VirtualBox, and use that.  It seems a little convoluted and out the way, but if that’s what I have to do…

Reason #2 for the slowdown is the ramp-up of Operation:MovingOut.  Yeah, nothing completely derails your everyday existence like packing all your worldly belongings (or as much as you feel like taking) and hefting it across country.  Thankfully, we got movers, through my wife’s work, that will be doing most of the schlepping.  That said, Frankenstein (the other linux box) is in boxes, the scanner’s in boxes, all the kitchen stuff has been relegated to boxes…it’s nuts.  SO, not a whole lot of time to blog — that’s what I’m trying to say.  I guess part of that is that my definition of blog isn’t “short missive to keep someone up to date on the goings on in my life.”  That’s a “Tweet,” now isn’t it?  No, I like paragraph form, and I like “Story Time with Phil.”  So, short story long — if I can’t sit down and write a long post, I’m probably not going to bother…

As a complete side note — whomever decided that three waves of loud-ass technology needed to be sent by the open windows at 7:45am, needs to be soundly beaten with a fish.  First the mower, then the weed-eaters and now the leaf blower…really?  7:45am?  REALLY?  Glad I was already up, or I’d be salty as opposed to simply offended and trying not to breathe in the noxious fumes contaminating an otherwise sumptuous morning.

Film, For Now…

Greetings and salutations.  It’s been a while since I’ve written anything about anything on any of my blogs.  This has a lot to do with getting ready to move and whole lot to do with transitional all of my computers over to linux.  The whyfors and whithertos of this decision are best left to another time, suffice to say, there is a dearth of useful blog writing software for linux, right now, and I am writing this in Microsoft’s Live Writer within a Windows7RC1 virtual machine running in VirtualBox on a Linux Mint (Ubuntu-based) system.  A little convoluted, but I’ll live – and I can still do what I want/need…

So what’s all this about film, for now?  Well, as you may or may not know, or care for that matter, my D70 died.  While my son has been gracious enough to allow me to use his D40, it’s just not the same, and I find myself drawn back to the power and majesty of my Nikon F4s and, to a lesser degree, my Minolta Autcord.  Both of these are film cameras, both are older than either of my children and both still work, flawlessly.  Well, maybe not flawlessly – the prism in the F4 is smudgy in a couple of places.   Other than that, they still work the same as the days I got them.  I wish I could say the same for my D70, which I loved, but which also gave up the shutter-release ghost….

So, what does that mean, really?  That means that in a time when I have no money for anything superfluous, and now being out of black and white film, my options are limited if I want to get the film developed, but, thankfully, I can develop the B&W myself.  It also means chemicals, agitation times and film scanning.  On the plus side, I found 2 rolls of Fuji Acros Neopan-100 film at Meijer for $2.49…not bad, considering it’s usually $3.95, mail order, and film is getting more and more scarce.  So, that helps…I just wish there had been more than 2 rolls, but that’s still 72 total exposures to use – which is a boon.

So, now what?  Well, I will keep shooting and keep trying to find time to develop the film.  With the Windows virtual machines, I don’t have to worry about the scanner, so that’s nice.  I’m enjoying being back in the land of film.  There’s something so therapeutic about *developing* the film and not just having the pictures *appear* on the screen.  It also makes me, as a photographer, take more time to compose a shot, meter properly and make a photograph rather than a snapshot.

So, I’m happy using film, but I’m also having some trepidation about embracing photo editing on linux – something I’ve not had great success with, previously.  We’ll see.  It’ll be fun.

Quick Lesson In Bird Feeding Etiquette…

When I was photographing “Myrtle” Yellow-rumped Warblers at the Spring Valley Wildlife Area, I encountered a lot of interesting behavior.  The most interesting behavior of all, however, was behavior that originally had me very frustrated.  I was shooting at 3fps (and the speedlight keeping up…got to love the outboard battery!) and so caught this particular Myrtle hopping around and being annoying, or so I thought.  In looking at the photographs, he was hunting, and I had just witnessed the stalking and killing of the prey, in this case, a smallish wood ant.  I could go on and on about this, but, really, I can’t – besides, it wouldn’t do it justice.  I’ll let the photographic sequence tell the story.  I’ll keep the pithy comments to myself.  Interestingly enough, Photobucket resequenced the photographs completely wrong, so I’ll do my best to reassemble them, here…

See something tasty? Let’s get a closer look… *boing* Hmmm… Yes…food! Mmmm…ant. ANTi-climactic?

So, there you have it.  You’re wondering about the title and etiquette and all that?  Well, the etiquette comes from not disturbing the bird while it’s trying to eat.  You’ll recall the stink-eye I got from the Osprey when I was photographing him and he dropped his fish.  He tried to play it off, but you could tell, he was getting a little crabby about not having his fish…   See you can just tell…he’s trying to play it off, but has THAT look.  This was from LAST year’s tax day trip.  He looks as happy as the rest of us.  However, the lesson here is to not interrupt dinner, just document it.

So, happy birding.  Be sure to get out while the Warblers are busy eating and not caring how many humans are about.  It can be very rewarding, and if you’re lucky enough to have a little slice of the semi-circle of life (I haven’t yet seen an ant eat a warbler…), you’ll cherish it.  I know I will.

Caesar Creek and Spring Valley WA – 4/22-23

There had been a lot of talk about Terns at Caesar Creek, so I thought I would check it out, since I don’t have very many good photographs of the Terns in question.  Well, OK, I have some fantastic looks at a Forrester’s Tern, but not a Caspian, so that was my main impetus.  Well, long story short – as is the way of things, there were very few gulls at all and absolutely no Terns.  That’s OK – I got some good photographs of the Bonaparte’s Gull that was hanging out with the Ring-billeds, and I also got a special treat: there was an Eared Grebe swimming around in lonely circles just off the boat ramp.  I wasn’t able to get as close as I wanted, the first day, and the light was dreadful, so three of the four photos I’ve saved of this beautiful bird are a little dark, but, yesterday, the sun was out and I brought my Better Beamer flash extender and while I wasn’t able to get close, again, I was able to get a single, well-lit and beautiful photograph.  That made me very happy.

On the way back from the boat launch, I spotted a Sparrow that wasn’t holding still, but wasn’t hiding, either.  It also had a yellow swatch across the face.  I thought, “hey, cool!” and sought out my opportunity to get a decent photograph of a Savannah Sparrow.  After about 10 minutes of chasing it down, I did end up with a few great shots.  That makes me happy – they’re cute little birds and I’ve rarely had one sit out in the open enough for me to get unobstructed photographs.  Luck was with me, it seems.

I moved on to Spring Valley Wildlife Area just a little later, and had  some of the best looks at birds I’d had for a while, inasmuch, as the Better Beamer allowed me to illuminate where I otherwise could not have.  This helped me get some fantastic shots of a Yellow-rumped Warbler – unlike any I’d taken before…the detail was so much better.

I think the highlight of the morning, though, was the pair of foraging Pileated Woodpeckers.  They were scuttling along the ground, pounding on the undersides of fallen trees, or along the bases of trees.  It was funny – they would see me, fly about 50 feet away, then go about their business, waiting until I was within a good sight-line, again, then fly a little further up.  They repeated this process a good 6 or 7 times, until finally disappearing into the thicker forest-y part of the trail.  They were funny, though, and it was so tempting to just say, “you’ve got a little schmutz.  Yeah, right there…”

Caesar Creek State Park

What some might start referring to as my home away from home, I spent the last couple of mornings at CCSP taking photographs of birds.  It’s what I do.  It’s what I love.  This past week, I even visited a couple of parts of the park that I hadn’t visited before.  What’s funny is that it provided me with good looks of two birds I didn’t really have good photographs to go with…unfortunately, because of a little experimentation, I still don’t, however…I used the 2x teleconverter.  Oops.  Everything’s a LITTLE soft.  Anyway, here are the fruits of this past week’s labors.

The first really good looks of birds I of which I didn’t have good photographs was the Blue-winged Teal.  These reclusive, squeaky little duck-like birds tend to swim away as fast as they can when anyone approaches, if not fly away altogether.  In this case, I was able to get pretty close and the 500mm telephoto didn’t disappoint, along with the morning’s gorgeous almost-golden light, in providing a couple of very solid photographs of this group of 5 males and 2 females.  While I wasn’t able to catch any of the action of the males chasing each other (they did this twice when I was on the other end of the pond), I still got solid looks.  I don’t think I had every gotten that close during breeding season – their heads are so amazing.  Gorgeous iridescence and that shade of slate blue – they really came out in the morning sun and I was glad to have seen it!

Looking out across the lake from here, I got a decent enough view to be able to ID a juvenile Common Loon swimming roughly 200  yards out.  Basically, it was a head bobbing above the chop every so often.  The photos I got were barely passable for ID purposes let alone for this blog…  <foreshadowing>Thankfully, fate would smile upon me, in a Loony way.</foreshadowing>

I then moved around to the little boat launch area just past the Youth Pond because I had seen something black and duck-like swimming near the “peninsula” – which used to be an island… When I got there, I spooked a Great Blue Heron – who was close to 50 yards away…sissy! – but didn’t manage to scare away the actual quarry: a lone, female Greater Scaup.  She was pretty and she was swimming very slowly away.  Unlike the Blue-winged Teal, it took her more then 10 minutes to get out of good photographic range.  That said, the wind coming off the lake directly into my face made it hard to either focus or hold the camera completely still – even on the tripod.  Still, I got some very good looks and a couple very good photos.  I don’t think I had realized how reddish brown the feathers were on a bird that looks deceptively black-brown from a distance.  Still, she hung around for a while, and I was grateful.

The beach was the next destination, as there had been mention of a Lesser Black-backed Gull hanging out amongst the Ring-billeds.  This would be a life bird for me, so I thought I would check it out.  When I got there, I saw only 4 gulls – all Ring-billed.  Ah, well.  I was a little disappointed, but as I was getting closer to the beach, Spring was confirmed for me, photographically.  You see, I have this thing… maybe it stems from a form of insanity, maybe not – you’ll have to decide.  However, since about 1992 or so, I have maintained that it  is not truly Spring until I see, and hear, an Eastern Meadowlark.  They used to greet me on my trek back from Spring Break to Wabash, right around the Indiana border, and that would seal it for me.  Recently, they’ve been eluding me until much later into Spring.  This, year, however, I saw one on the 5th of April, so, it became Spring. However, I haven’t gotten good photographs of them, EVER, and that was the biggest change, this time around.  This happy fella provided some excellent looks – even moving his head around quite a bit to allow for all you field-mark junkies out there to make all the requisite diagnoses.  Once I got close enough for REALLY good shots, however, he flew to the other side of the lake – something that is impossible to track (even with the monster lens…) with a large bird, let alone one the size of the Eastern Meadowlark.  So, I turned my attention back to the beach – fearing there would not be anything worthwhile since about 5 minutes prior, two motorboats went whizzing through the area where the Loon was and creating a bunch of wake.  That’s when I saw it…

I have never been closer than a couple hundred yards to a Common Loon.  This is evidenced by my displeasingly rough photographs that are barely useful for IDing the birds.  This changed dramatically, as I watched a full-breeding plumage Common Loon swimming *towards* the beach.  At its closest, it was within, I would say, 35-40 yards.  I got some amazing looks.  It was at this point that I noticed  it was going to be very silhouetted and I would have to be careful because it was swimming right to that patch of the water that served as the brilliant sun-reflector and photographer-blinder.  Thankfully, I got some excellent shots of this beautiful bird before it got to a point where it was physically painful to try to focus on any portion of the water where it was swimming.  That said, I still managed close to 10 minutes of quality time with this swimming duck and apparently didn’t spook it, as it didn’t dive once.  It just swam closer and closer, until I think it figured out I was watching, and then just swam further out, slowly, allowing some great looks at the wonderful almost-houndstooth pattern of feathers on its back.  I love Loons – and not just my family.  This was VERY cool for me.

Photo Cataloging and Blindness

Syntactically, "I play by myself," and "I play with myself" aren’t too dissimilar.  Their meanings, however, are, at least colloquially, quite different.  Likewise, the phrases "I manage my photographs on my computer," and "My computer manages my photographs," are similar, but can mean two different things.  Either way, with the ill-phrased sayings, the end result is that you might just go blind. 

I have set ACDSee Photo Manager 2009 loose on my system to catalog my photographs.  I wish it luck, as I’ve gone nearly blind organizing tiny thumbnails of photographs from folder to folder to make sure that the 8.5×11" photographs do not intermingle with the 8×10" ones or that the black and white photographs still have the same heirarchy as do the color photos.  The bottom line is that it’s tedious and going through using Windows’ meagre image viewer to discern whether a photograph is "good enough" can not only cause your vision to suffer, but your sanity, as well.

So, with that in mind — do I recommend cataloging your photographs?  Duh.  Do I recommend ACDSee to assist you in cataloging your photographs on your computer?  I do, for the most part.  I’ve used ACDSee since it’s initial release (how scary is THAT?!) and this version, thus far, is much easier to use to keep tabs on photos, as well as filter, arrange and label them.  This isn’t a review of the product, though, but it is the software I have tried to use for my photo management, so it’s what I’ll be talking about.  As to why you would want to use this product or any other, think of it this way — if you’re like me, you take a lot of photos.  The most time-consuming part of the entire process is figuring out which shots to keep and which to throw into the shredder.  Also, if you’re like me, you have a LOT of "incoming photos" which need to be further sorted, edited in PhotoShop or what-have-you, and then placed in its proper folder.  With photo management software this is a boatload easier and if you’re using one of the Adobe Products (Album, Lightroom), it will do this just as well as ACDSee and it’s also intertwined with PhotoShop, so that connection will seem much more seamless.

Since I began writing this entry, two things have become painfully  clear: Vista’s file management code was ripped straight from a Commodore 64’s kernel and ACDSee HATES cataloging more than 5,000 photographs at a time using Vista’s file management code.  It consistently explodes when dealing with the photos and usually dies around the number 5,651.  Sad.  Since this has come about, I sought out Extensis’ Portfolio 8.51.  It’s a solid program as well.  It’s not perfect, either, and can get very frustrating with the amount of room it will take up on your drive should you neglect to turn off the “create thumbnails” feature when generating your catalog.  When cataloging 10.5GB of bird photographs, I really don’t need 1.3GB in thumbnails…really.

So, the bottom line is that cataloging is a very good thing when it works and that it’s very difficult to get a good piece of software to do everything you want it to.  If you have one, great – stick with it.  If you don’t – get one.  It’s not quite as important as a backup program, especially if you already have a fairly organized directory hierarchy, as do I, but still, it DOES make it easier to have a piece of software whereby you can assign keywords and search on photo requirements.  I’ve rambled on long enough, and I hope a point has been made.  Until next time….

Cowan Lake and Spring Valley Wildlife Area – 3/22/2009

When I arrived at 7:45, it was chilly, but not in a bad way, and the birds were out in full force.  It was going to be a good day.  I could tell by looking at the lake that there were plenty of waterfowl, which was nice, and by the trees – a lot, and I do mean a LOT, of Vultures.

As I was heading over to the far end of the lake, I noticed a head bobbing.  It looked like a loon, posture-wise, but it was about 100 yards out, or so.  So, the photo I got was good enough for diagnostics, but that’s about it.  That said, it was still my first Common Loon of the year.  That made me happy – especially since I had heard one a couple of days prior.  I felt less crazy, in a way.

My first real photographic stop was in the back path along the far end of the lake where the Vultures were roosting.  I don’t think I  realized exactly how much they scat upon each other.  It’s really rather foul.  Anyway, when I arrived in the marsh, there were about 5 Black Vultures foraging in the mud.  Several more came to visit, then left back up to the trees, and it was a revolving door of mud- dabbling Vultures.  I’d never seen anything like it, but it was definitely interesting to watch!  Occasionally, one would pull a fish carcass out from under several inches of much, while others were just pecking off the surface.  I’m not sure what all they were finding, but it kept them busy for quite a while.  I also noticed things about feather patterns in the neck area that I had never been close enough t o see, before.  It was kind of surreal, in a way.  I was able to get, I would say, 30 feet away to observe.  I also observed that the last actual kill in that marsh area was a skunk, in which I was standing, I noted.  I couldn’t decide who smelled worse, at that point, them or me.

As I headed back towards the shore of the lake, I noticed some birds that always help me welcome spring, Eastern Bluebirds.  They were cavorting around a tree trying to avoid being photographed at all costs.  The male was better at this, as is evidenced by only photographs I have being of the female.  Still, she was a cutie and held still as long as she could before the pressure of potentially being eaten by a photographer 20 feet away was too much to bear.

I was also graced by several Great Blue Heron flyovers, which leads me to believe that the rookery is in full operations mode, now.  This  particular group headed due east – straight into the sun – so I didn’t get as many good shots as I wanted, but still came away with some pretty solid shots.

Snipes appear to use some mystical tow-cable technology.  There were four, foraging in the mud and then something spooked them (probably me).  Did they all take off at once?  No.  Did the bird in the front take off to be followed by the others?  No.  The bird in back takes off, and once about 5 feet above and past the next one, that one took off.  This happened the next time, too, as the third bird didn’t take off until the second bird was 5 feet above and out from it.  It was very odd.  Of course, I was grateful for this behavior, since it gave bird #4 enough time to think and figure that they were just all … loony … and didn’t take off, at all, allowing me to get very close and get some very nice photographs.  I had never seen  them “tall,” before, either, which was one of my parting shots I got as it trotted out to the ends of the mudflat, blending in ever so well…

Also on the mudflats were some Yellowlegs, both Lesser and Greater.  They were having fun dunking their heads into the mud up to their eyeballs and then doing the same in the water.  It was amusing to watch and really made me think how different our lives would be if we only had wings for our upper appendages.  At any rate, they gave me some decent looks, though it was over a couple little mini-sessions, as they felt the need to flush every so often and regroup.  They’re cute, though.  They stuck around quite a bit and were closer than the  other waders that flushed.  The Snipes (not technically waders…) flushed to the far end of the lake, as did the Kildeer and the Pectoral Sandpiper, who managed to stay as far away from me as possible, but when the next fellow showed up with binocs and a camera, he was  very 
accommodating.   I’ll remember  this…and I carry grudges. Seriously, though, this was on my way out of Cowan Lake as I headed back to Spring Valley Nature Preserve/Wildlife Area (depending to whom you speak…).

So, I made it over to Spring Valley WA just in time to see a whole lot of fisher-folk.  Usually, I don’t like a lot of people, but with the number of birds that were still around, it felt good – it’s the most alive this place has felt in several years.  I hope that it’s a sign of how things are going to be, there, because it’s felt so dead around there for a while, it would be nice to reclaim some of what I remember from about 5 years ago when I routinely saw 5+ life birds a visit.  With that in mind, what did I see?

Well, my I headed up the bike path, first, as it tends to have some fun things in the periphe ry, and this time was no different…  Right off the bat, I got a fabulous look at a White-throated Sparrow.  He sat very still in very good light.  That was much appreciated, and I thanked him for his time.  This was in start contrast to the White-throated Sparrow from the day before, who played a really fun game of “Peek-a-boo,” allowing some cute shots, but nothing earth-shattering.  For the most part, though, I didn’t get a lot of good shots on this trip, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t see good birds.  I saw a Swainson’s Thrush, who was delightfully coy and camera-shy, along with my first Eastern Phoebe of the year, too.  I got a few good looks at the Phoebe, but it was close to 50 yards away, and they’re not large birds.  Finally, along the back path coming towards the path the goes along the back of the lake, I saw my first Warbler of the season.  It was a lone Yellow-rumped Warbler who, like most Warblers, didn’t hold still for any posterity shots, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.

It was a good outing and I enjoyed myself.  I’ve not been on a 4.5 mile hike for a long time and it felt really good.  When I pulled into the homestead almost 6 full hours after I left that morning, I felt calm and confident I had some pretty good shots, even though, to me, those shots were secondary to the time I got to clear my mind and enjoy the fantastic weather.